Mamoncillo Seed

Mamoncillo, also called Spanish lime, genip or quenepa, is a fruit tree of the soapberry family native to South and Central America and naturalized across the Caribbean, grown for its small green fruit with sweet, gelatinous, salmon-colored pulp. Each fruit encloses one ivory-white seed that is normally discarded when the pulp is eaten fresh, but the seed itself is edible once roasted: roasting converts its otherwise starchy, astringent flesh into a mild, nutty kernel often compared to chestnut. Roasted mamoncillo seeds, sometimes ground together with the tree's bark or leaves, have also long served in traditional Caribbean and Latin American remedies for dysentery and other bowel complaints.